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Why everyone needs unions

The governor's bill to eliminate collective bargaining rights for state workers has sparked protests in Wis. |
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By NELSON LICHTENSTEIN | 2/21/11 2:47 PM EST

It’s easy to see the big issues at stake in the battle between the public sector unions and the Republicans in Wisconsin and other states.

Who will pay for the budget deficits that bedevil so many states? Will public workers, like so many private-sector workers before them, take a real hit to their wages and benefits? Will the unions continue to be a backbone of the Democratic Party, contributing money and, far more importantly, engaged members to the campaigns and lobbying efforts that seem to be a permanent feature of our political life?

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POLITICO 44

But there is a more fundamental question: Why do public workers feel the need to join unions in the first place?

“We have the strongest civil service system in the country,” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker bragged on Sunday. “The rights that workers have in this state are not based on their contracts; they’re based on that law.”

So what do public workers get from being in a union — aside from better wages or slightly better retirement benefits, at least in the old days?

Conservatives, who are driving this debate, have a powerful but contradictory answer. On the one hand, they say, public-sector unions are fantastically successful and powerful: teachers run schools; sanitation men take home huge salaries and pensions hardly befitting an unschooled laborer and Department of Motor Vehicle clerks are lazy but protected by complex and bureaucratic work rules.

But there is the other side of their argument. Public employee unions, say their conservative detractors, do nothing, or very little, for their members. In most instances they can’t strike. Wages and pensions are often set by compensation commissions or other bodies.

More importantly, the work lives of public employees are governed by civil service rules, which ensure hiring and promotion based on merit. If there is a dispute, an employee has an equitable grievance procedure already set up by the state, county or municipality.

Neither narrative is entirely false. The reason public employees are far more likely to be unionized than private-sector workers — at least in the North, Midwest and West — is that managers and executives in those states don’t have a personal, career-breaking incentive to fire potential union members.

If you are a Wal-Mart store manager, for example, and your underlings start to talk union, your career is toast — never mind if you succeed in halting the union drive. In contrast, public officials have to adhere to civil service rules and procedures before, during and after a union-organizing campaign.

In contrast to the private sector, public workers in Wisconsin, or even South Carolina, are not “at will” employees — meaning a manager can’t just fire a worker for any reason he or she chooses — as is the case in virtually all nonunion private-sector workplaces. Courts have long ruled that in the private sector, workers can be fired “at will … for good cause, no cause or even for cause morally wrong, without thereby being guilty of legal wrong.”

The glove makers and leather goods workers needed a union. The union over time ruined the industry, and it moved overseas.

The huge American Textile Industry workers needed a union. The union over time ruined the industry, and it moved overseas.

The workers in the Foundries producing most of the metal production in the world needed a union. The union over time ruined the industry, and it moved overseas.

The workers in the vehicle facories needed a union. The union over time ruined the industry, but before it could all be moved overseas, corrupt politicians, robbed the taxpayers, to pay the huge wages and benefits to the union workers, even though the country was practically bankrupt.

Just a few examples, which could easily be enlarged.

Government Employees cannot simply be moved overseas, so the taxpayers must subsidize a life style which they themselves, cannot afford, or they must roll back excessive wages and benefits, when times are bad.

You want a union? Go work in the private sector. I DO NOT want to pay for your excessive wages and benefits. As the person PAYING the bill I have NO INPUT into how much you can BUY from your congressperson..

Absolutely nothing in this article to justify having union representation for public employees. If they need a union, then every single person on the planet needs a union and then unions would be useless. As it is now, only a very small percentage of people are represented by unions and they are paid much higher salaries than their counterparts who are not represented by a union. So.....why do public sector employees need unions? To get salaries and benefits that are better than average with no chance of being fired and have taxpayers pay for those benefits. Not even slightly a good thing. Give it up...you gave no compelling reason to keep unions or collective bargaining.

You can argue all the theoretical points of union vs non-union all day long. But at the end of the day we see the ong-term effect of public sector unions - they fund and provide free labor to politicians to get them elected so that the politicians can then give more money and better benefits to the labor unions. And why not? Both the unions and the politicians make out. It's the third party to this arrangement - the taxpayers - that pay for both sides of this equation.

This arrangement has worked out so well for the unions that they now make more than twice as much in pay and benefits as the taxpayers who are funding this largesse. It has got to stop while there is still some of the economy left to save. Public sector employees already receive more legal protection than private sector employees. The public sector unions have got to go.

Unions of government employees contribute mightily to the campaigns of politicians who, when elected, reward the employees with lucrative pay and fringe benefits. The government representatives end up "bargaining" with the unions that got them elected. This incestuous relationship must end. It is bankrupting state and local governments.

Even federal employees cannot bargain over pay and financial benefits, at least not directly. They do work to elect people who are likely to be more generous with pay and benefits.

Wow, to try and tie in the assasination of Dr. King with the need to bankrupt the public sector should be considered blasphemy. Echol Cole and Robert Walker, the two workers who climbed into the trash truck compactor should have: A: Gotten in the cab instead of the compactor and B: Realized they accepted an outdoor job where it occasionally rains. I'm sorry they died but I don't play golf with metal clubs in a lightning storm either.

I've just seen a Wisconsins 6th Grade teachers salary at $71,808 with fringe benefits of $18,243, that's with just two years of experience. That's over $90,000 a year total. Here's a 4th Grade teachers salary at $67,161 with fringe benefits of $34,594 with just three years of service. That's over $100,000 for nine months work or $135,673.33 extrapolated to 12 months. I understand nine year olds can be trying but this is rediculous. You can easily find all this information with Google.

The median income for Houston, Texas Elementary teachers is around $52k without all the crazy benefits that the Wisconsin Unions are crying about. So Teachers Union shut up and go make macaroni art and try and earn your insane amount of pay.

Its not enough to look at the workers - we need to look at what they accomplish and what it costs. The latter is particularly important because taxpayers, unlike consumers, do not have freedom of choice to obtain government-provided services. It is, by definition, a monopoly. Therefore, we need to substitute other means of control that the free market provides through competition. One of those means is to resist government workers seeing to strike (ref. Reagan's firing of the Air Traffic Controllers). Another is to let workers negotiate wages but not benefits (which is what Gov. Walker is attempting to do). Look at K-12 teachers for a minute. We have doubled spending in real terms (i.e., adjusted for inflation) since 1983, but has education gotten better? NO. Dropout rates are unacceptably high and too many students, even if they graduate, are ill-prepared for college. And K-12 teachers have tenure, which is ridiculous. Even when a teacher is obviously poor, it is nearly impossible to fire them. Instead, teachers union force policies of last in, first out, which perpetuates the problem. Its time to clean house.

The essential argument I see on these comments all the time against unions is as follows. Rich corporate managers got free trade deals and decided they'd rather have (virtual) slaves in foreign countries make their goods for pennies. So, those corporate managers sent those jobs to the third world because (dignified) American workers didn't want to be (virtual) slaves working their lives away for pennies a day with no benefits or security. So it's all the workers fault.

Look, why are you all mad at your neighbor while the CEOs run off with the bucks? They don't trickle down. US corporations pay hardly any taxes. They stole our national wealth. Best I can figure, anyone on the politically right wing side of this issue suffers from some kind of Corporate Stockholm Syndrome.

The argument isn't contradictory at all if one looks at the mediocrity that unions foster. Their leadership wield great power over government as a public sector union and yet they do not make demands for excellence in their rank and file. Check w/New York or any number of union bound states as to how difficult it is to fire a teacher no matter how bad that teacher is. As usual, POLITICO, carrying the water of the left.

As a taxpayer Im offended by the misuse of my funds for the public servants benefit. Lets just take sick days as one example.In 35 years of working,I can honestly say I've never had a paid "sick day". The ONLY sick days I was ever paid for were the days I went to work with the Flu,puking,coughing,bleeding,a cold,or limping,and fought my way thru the day. .I dont remember missing a single day of my working life due to sickness.The few times I had to take time off from work to have a torn ACL replaced,and a broken arm repaired,were not paid time off either. I wonder how much taxpayer money could be saved by just eliminating "sick days" pay for every Federal,State,and Civil Servant?What a joke.Are you Public Union whiners starting to get it yet?The rest of us are just getting more and more ****ed off at your snivleing.

That wasn’t Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul, or Ronald Reagan talking. That was George Meany -- the former president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O -- in 1955. Government unions are unremarkable today, but the labor movement once thought the idea absurd.

The founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this “unthinkable and intolerable.”

Government collective bargaining means voters do not have the final say on public policy. Instead their elected representatives must negotiate spending and policy decisions with unions. That is not exactly democratic – a fact that unions once recognized.

More propaganda from from Politico. You can take your union thug buddies and get out of Wisconsin. I voted for Gov Walker because he SAID that he would clean up the mess in Madison!!! YEAH Gov Walker!!! Stand firm!!! Don't let the left-wing protesters who lied about being sick sway you!!! There are thousands of us TAXPAYERS who Support you!!!